Luxury’s 2026 Christmas Rebellion Against AI Slop

Dior and Prada are pushing back against AI this Christmas with handcrafted, nostalgic imagery

Christian Dior’s Night in Color — film still. Courtesy of Dior, via WWD.

Dior has unveiled its 2026 Holiday Campaign with a short film called “Christian Dior’s Night in Color” with voiceovers from actor Robert Pattinson as well as Rihanna, and in collaboration with Animation Director Sylvain Chomet. The film is a hand-drawn ode to founder Christian Dior’s friendship with film star Marlene Dietrich. The beauty of hand-crafted artistry here, created under the direction of Dior Creative Director Jonathan Anderson, is a remarkable difference from much AI marketing being featured today as the commercial season ramps up before Black Friday.

Dior’s new release follows an earlier project this year that pushes back against artificial intelligence with hand-painted backgrounds to their Miss Dior campaign, directed by French filmmaker Ugo Bienvenu inspired by 1980s Japanese animation.

The story of Miss Dior — animated film by Remembers, the studio founded by Ugo Bienvenu and Félix de Givry. © Dior.

Prada has also championed the human touch with their Christmas campaign reminiscent of old-school Disney, complete with animated mice and foxes in a combination of live-action and hand-drawn characters.

Drawing Prada: Animated by Hand — Sadie Sink and the illustrated mice. Photography and direction by Glen Luchford; animation direction by John Pomeroy. © Prada.

Hermès and Loewe have taken similar approaches to artistry in their marketing campaigns overall this year, taking a firm stance against generative Artificial Intelligence, in a new vein of marketing many are calling “Effort Signaling”, where brands and professionals are overworking to prove their work was done by hand in an ever-growing automated content world.

While the quality of many of these fashion houses continues to decline in their products (See our coverage of that issue in our Autumn Edition of The Swish Magazine), brands commissioning handmade art is a step in the right direction to preserve the human spirit. While this is applaudable, this preservation is creating a dividing line in price points, essentially marrying luxury high prices with humanity. If you want something hand-crafted, you’ll have to pay for it.

Contrary to the ever-growing and harder-to-spot Hobby-Lobby style AI slop, we must take this move by fashion houses as motivation to invest and create our own hand-crafted art, gifts, and decor this season to ensure we all get to experience humanity this season. Don’t fear perfection or polish as we enter Advent, but make what you can by hand. The messiness, details, and effort this shows is what sets us apart again, perhaps becoming that much more valuable, in spirit and in luxury.